Networks of Outrage and Hope

Social Movements in the Internet Age

Manuel Castells

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745695761, 9780745695754
• eBook ISBN: 9780745695792
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Networks of Outrage and Hope is an exploration of the new forms of social movements and protests that are erupting in the world today, from the Arab uprisings to the indignadas movement in Spain, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the social protests in Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere. While these and similar social movements differ in many important ways, there is one thing they share in common: they are all interwoven inextricably with the creation of autonomous communication networks supported by the Internet and wireless communication.

In this new edition of his timely and important book, Manuel Castells examines the social, cultural and political roots of these new social movements, studies their innovative forms of self-organization, assesses the precise role of technology in the dynamics of the movements, suggests the reasons for the support they have found in large segments of society, and probes their capacity to induce political change by influencing people's minds. Two new chapters bring the analysis up-to-date and draw out the implications of these social movements and protests for understanding the new forms of social change and political democracy in the global network society.

OCCUPY WALL STREET:
HARVESTING THE SALT OF THE EARTH

THE OUTRAGE, THE THUNDER, THE SPARK

There was outrage in the air. At first, suddenly, the real estate market plunged. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes, and millions lost much of the value they had traded their lives for. Then, the financial system came to the brink of collapse, as a result of the speculation and greed of its managers. Who were bailed out. With taxpayers’ money. They did not forget to collect their millionaire bonuses, rewarding their clumsy performance. Surviving financial companies cut off lending, thus closing down thousands of firms, shredding millions of jobs and sharply reducing pay. No one was held accountable. Both political parties prioritized the rescue of the financial system. Obama was overwhelmed by the depth of the crisis and quickly set aside most of his campaign promises – a campaign that had brought unprecedented hope for a young generation that had re-entered politics to revitalize American democracy. The hardest was the fall. People became discouraged and enraged. Some began to quantify their rage. The share of US income of the top 1 percent of Americans jumped from 9 percent in 1976 to 23.5 percent in 2007. Cumulative productivity growth between 1998 and 2008 reached about 30 percent, but real wages increased only by 2 percent during the decade. The financial industry captured most of the productivity gains, as its share of profits increased from 10 percent in the 1980s to 40 percent in 2007, and the value of its shares increased from 6 percent to 23 percent in spite of employing only 5 percent of the labor force. Indeed, the top 1 percent appropriated 58 percent of the economic growth in this period. In the decade preceding the crisis, hourly real wages increased by 2 percent while the income of the richest 5 percent increased by 42 percent. The pay of a CEO was 50 times higher than that of the average worker in 1980, and 350 times more in 2010. These were no longer abstract figures. There were faces, too: Madoff, Wagoner, Nardelli, Pandit, Lewis, Sullivan. And they were interspersed with politicians and government officials (Bush, Paulsen, Summers, Bernanke, Geithner, and, yes, Obama) who were rationalizing people’s pain and arguing for the need of saving finance to save people’s lives. Moreover, the Republican Party went on a vengeful offensive to bring down a popular president who came to power advocating for an active role of government in improving the welfare of society. The electoral success of this suicidal strategy allowed the Republican dominated Congress to block most reform initiatives, thus aggravating the crisis and increasing its social costs. The first expression of popular outrage was the rise of the Tea Party, a mixture of populism and libertarianism that offered a channel of mobilization to a variety of indignant opposition to government in general and to Obama in particular. Yet, when it became clear that it was bankrolled by Koch Industries, among other corporations, and captured by the right of the Republican Party as stormtroopers to be sacrificed in the final stage of the electoral process, it lost appeal for many of its participants. Diehard Tea Partiers became militants of a manipulated cause: to undo government, so to free the hands of corporate business. A sense of despair set throughout the land. Then, there was thunder.

It came from Tahrir Square; an irony of history considering that for most Americans, only oil and Israel are of any relevance in the Middle East. Yet, images and sounds of people’s determination to bring down dictatorships against all odds, at whatever cost, rekindled faith in people’s power, at least in some activists’ quarters. The echo of the Arab revolts was amplified by the news coming from Europe, and particularly from Spain, proposing novel forms of mobilization and organization, based on the practice of direct democracy as a way to further the demand for real democracy. In a world connected live by the Internet, concerned citizens became immediately aware of struggles and projects they could identify with.

The Obama campaign had left an imprint on thousands who had believed in the possibility of real change, and had enacted a new form of political mobilization in which the Internet networks became crucial, as far as they connected people meeting face-to-face in neighborhoods and living rooms, to form an insurgent political movement. I documented the power of this truly new form of politics, inspired by hope and powered by the Internet, in my book Communication Power (2009).¹

Many former Obamists, together with thousands of people who have been at the forefront of struggles against social injustice for quite some time, including the public sector unions that mobilized in and around the Wisconsin campaign for bargaining rights, were receptive of the buzz surrounding the #spanishrevolution and of the Greek demonstrations against the crisis. Some of them traveled to Europe. They saw the camps, participated in the General Assemblies and experienced a new form of deliberation and decision-making, actually connecting with a historical tradition of assembly-led movements on both sides of the Atlantic. They participated in meetings in which the call for a global demonstration on October 15, 2011, under the slogan “United for Global Change,” was discussed and decided. In this way, the global networks of hope extended decisively to the United States in the summer of 2011. Then came the spark.

On July 13, 2011, Adbusters, a Vancouver-based journal of cultural critique, posted the following call on its blog:

#occupywallstreet

Are you ready for a Tahrir moment? On September 17^th, flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street.

And they went on to elaborate:

A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. [There is a] spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain.

The beauty of this new formula … is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people’s assemblies. We zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen. The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices … Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand? … [It is the one] that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It’s time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we’re doomed without it.

This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind … This could be the beginning of a whole new social dynamic in America, a step beyond the Tea Party movement, where, instead of being caught helpless by the current power structure, we the people start getting what we want whether it be the dismantling of half the 1,000 military bases America has around the world to the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act or a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals. Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America. Post a comment and help each other zero in on what our one demand will be. And then let’s screw up our courage, pack our tents and head to Wall Street with a vengeance September 17. For the wild, Culture Jammers HQ.

The date selected was symbolic: September 17 is the anniversary of the signing of the American Constitution, although few people are aware of it. And so, the initial call to occupy was aimed at restoring democracy by making the political system independent from the power of money. To be sure, there were other networks and groups involved in the origins of the Occupy movement, and some in the movement have resented the attribution of the first call to Adbusters. For instance, AmpedStatus, a network of activists organized around a website, had been posting for quite a while analysis and information on the financial destruction of the US economy. On February 15, 2010, David DeGraw posted the first of a six-part series on the financial cri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface 2015
• Acknowledgments 2012
• Opening: Networking Minds, Creating Meaning, Contesting Power
• Prelude to Revolution: Where it All Started
• The Egyptian Revolution
• Dignity, Violence, Geopolitics: The Arab Uprising and Its Demise
• A Rhizomatic Revolution: Indignadas in Spain
• Occupy Wall Street: Harvesting the Salt of the Earth
• Networked Social Movements: A Global Trend?
• Changing the World in the Network Society
• Networked Social Movements and Political Change
• Beyond Outrage, Hope: The Life and Death of Networked Social Movements
• Appendix to Changing the World in the Network Society
• End User License Agreement